Justinian's Reconquest Destroyed More of Rome Than the Barbarians

Rome wasn't killed by its enemies. It was killed by a rescue. Everyone knows the fall of Rome — 476, the last emperor, the barbarian king, the lights going out. Almost nobody knows what happened when the Eastern Empire under Justinian tried to take Italy back. The Gothic Wars of 535-554 emptied the peninsula. Milan — one of the great cities of the north — was leveled, its men slaughtered, its…